Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #832: More Codenames

Episode Date: May 7, 2021

One of the very first podcasts I did was on Magic codenames. Well, enough time has gone by that I had 30 more minutes of codenames to talk about. I explain how we named them and share some stories.

I'm not pulling into my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Coronavirus edition. Okay, so back in 2012, I started doing my podcast. And I think my 15th podcast, back in around November of 2012, was one on codenames. And at the time, I talked about every codename up to the point that was public at the time I did the podcast. And it dawned on me, it's actually labeled in my internal thing, Codenames Part 1, because the idea was, oh, maybe later I'll do it. And I just realized as looking over themes that, so I'm in charge of doing codenames. I'm going to talk a little bit about codenames, and I'm going to pick up from where I left off. In fact, it's funny, I did Blood, Sweat, and Tears, and there's Secrets of

Fears, which if you listen to my 2016 podcast, you heard me talk about. But really quickly, before I jump into talking about all the different Codenames and where they came from, and I want to tell a little bit of behind the scenes of how I became the Codename Guy. bit of behind the scenes of how I became the codename guy. Now, one of the things that I've often talked about is when I first came to Wizards, I was the word guy in a room full of math people. That I was the person who like learned, like I went to school and learned communications and writing. And I was surrounded by mathematicians and engineers and just people very not word-centric. And I've always been fascinated with words. I mean, I obviously became a writer and stuff.

And so anyway, I very early on just was fascinated by the idea of the code names. And so I just kind of took it on. I just sort of took it on. No one really asked me to do it way back when. I just sort of was entertained by the idea. And some of the early, I mean, some of the very early podcasts I didn't pick. But I eventually got to the point where I started doing podcasts. And once I became a head designer, I just sort of made it my job to pick the thing.

So, and over the years, one of the things about a good codename, the whole idea behind a codename is we don't know the name of the set when we're making it, and we need something to talk about it. And what we found was, if you give a name that's somewhat real, or even remotely real, people get used to it. Like, The Dark is the one

I, and in Codenames Part 1, I talk about The Dark, where they use the name The Dark, and after enough time, it just sounded okay. But the dark is not the greatest name. And so what we do now is we give a name we'd never use, and a name that has nothing to do with what the set's about. And then it just gives us something to talk about. And over the years, what I've learned is

there are actually a lot of qualities to a good set name. So as we walk through, you'll see some evolution here. Like early on, when I started doing codenames, this was back when blocks were going, like early codenames was just me trying to make sure you could remember

the order of the codenames. Because like, for example, if you go way, way back, we have stuff like Bogavadi, Rashimulat, and Gorgonzola, or Tempest, Stronghold, and Exodus. Those have nothing to do with each other. Who knows what order they go in? And then eventually, you can start seeing around Odyssey, like I'm doing Argon, Boron, Carbon.

Okay, it's ABC, at least it has an order. It has an order you know. It's alphabetical. And then Manny, Moe, and and Jack Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato I started getting into three set names where at least they have a rhythm to them so if you hear them, if you hear

Earth, Wind and Fire, you know Earth before Wind before Fire and so for a long time I was doing codenames like that, so when we left off in my last podcast we were up to Blood, Sweat and Tears which was Battle for Zendikar, Over the Gatewatch, and Shadows over Innistrad. So the thing back then was we were doing three set blocks, but every once in a while we would change things up and do a fourth set. But when we did a fourth set, we didn't want you

knowing we were doing a fourth set, so we had to be kind of sneaky at times and this is a good example where there was a fourth set but if we had a codename that was 2 and 2 that would give away that we were doing 2 and 2 so we named it something that sounded like a three set name Blood, Sweat, and Tears but secretly Blood and Sweat were Battle for Zendikar and Oath of the Gatewatch

and then Shadows of Innistrad we ended up calling it Eldritch Moon'sierce, so it was Tears and Fears. I like Tears for Fears as a band. I think that's probably where it came from. Um, but anyway, so the idea was, uh, Blood, Sweat, and Tears, you knew the order. Um, but after

that, we then got to the- Oh, sorry. So the next time, we get to Kaladesh. Now, as of Battle for Zendikar, we're doing two set blocks, but we work ahead of time, and we tell the audience the code names. So Kaladesh had the same problem, that

it was really two two-set blocks, but we had to name it like it was a three-set block. So Kaladesh, Aether Revolt, and Amonkhet were Lock, Stock, and Barrel. And so, once again, it was just, we were doing expressions. This is back in the day where I was

just into three-name expressions. One of the things we also learned along the way was not only did it have to have an order, it had to be something common enough that everyone knew the order. Like, for example, way back when, I think this was a name that Bill had come up with.

We had, onslaught block was Manny, Moe, and Jack, which were, there's a shop called The Pet Boys, which exists here. I don't know how many places

has The Pet Boys, but there's three brothers in The Pet Boys, Manny, Moe, and Jack. But if you didn't know The Pet Boys and you heard Manny, Moe, and Jack, you had no idea what was first.

Manny, Moe, Jack, what's first? You have no idea. So then we started making sure we had expressions. But then, for example, and Jack. You had no idea what was first. Manny, Moe, Jack. What's first? You have no idea. So then we started making sure we had expressions. But then, for example, I did one for Kansa Tarkir, Kansa Tarkir, Fate of the Forged, Dragon Tarkir, which was Huey, Dewey, Louie. And even though there is an order,

like Disney has an order for Huey, Dewey, and Louie, no one knew the order. Very few people did. And plus they rhymed, so it ended up not being a really good name. But anyway, lock, stock, and barrel is an expression after I said oh we shouldn't have rhyming names

after Huey, Huey, and Louie notice I have tears and fears and lock and stock so I don't really learn that lesson right away I'm not sure how we got to lock, stock, and barrel once again the code names predate the set. So, like, I didn't know that Kaladesh was going to be an artifact set.

Because some people think, like, Lock, Stock, and Barrel refers to a gun and a gun's a machine. No, none of that. None of that. I didn't even know what it was when we named it. Anyway, so Art of Devastation, we needed to give a name to go with laughs.

I think originally it was... It had to go with barrel. It had to go with barrel. It had to go with barrel. Amiket was barrel. So originally it was monkeys, like barrel of monkeys. But then we changed it to laughs. Monkeys was... There was some other code name they were getting confused with.

And so we had to change it to laughs. So it's lock and stock and then like barrel of laughs. It's an expression. Okay. laughs, uh, um, is an expression. Um, okay. But after that, uh, we now get into, now we're into a two-set block structure where the audience knows we're doing a two, so I can now name them after their two-set block. The audience knew we were doing that. Uh, and, uh, it turns out that, um, what I decided to do was, we were working on,

I was naming two years worth of sets at once. And so what I did was, I named them, it was important to me, one of the confusions that had happened was, so for example, previous year we had Blood, Sweat & Tears and Lock, Stock & Barrel. Well, which comes first? Blood, Sweat & Tearsars and Lock, Stock, and Barrel. Well, which comes first?

Blood, Sweat, and Tears or Lock, Stock, and Barrel? You have no idea. Like, I named them so that you knew the order that they went in, but you had no sense of what order they went in between them. And because Magic has so many stats that we're working on ahead of time, you kind of never know sort of what's what, right? So I realized that I needed to, I wanted to have a convention that helped people remember

both the order of the blocks, the sets in the block and the order of the blocks. So the idea I came up with was doing foods. And the idea was there were a lot of expressions that were blank and blank for foods and that I would then do them in order. So the idea was, Ixalan block was going to be breakfast,

Dominaria block was going to be lunch, Guilds of Ravnica block was going to be dinner, and then the War of the Spark block was going to be dessert. That was the original idea. And at the time I made it, these were all

large, small, large, small. This is the point where we had, once again, we had switched over, like, back in the day it was three sets and then a core set. And then we switched over to doing the two-in-two system from the three-in-one, well, the three-in-core set system.

So the two-in-two meant we had a large, small, large, small, large, small, large, small every year. There were two sets, one large, one small, each thing. Okay, so for breakfast, this is Ixalan and Rivals Ixalan. I did ham and eggs. The reason I didn't do bacon and eggs, which is slightly more

a known expression than ham and eggs, is Mirrodin was codenamed Bacon, and I was trying not to repeat codenames. Now, I will point out, Mirrodin was way, way done. No one was ever going to get confused, but I just felt like it was wrong to reuse codenames. So I named it Ham and Eggs instead of Bacon and Eggs. And like I said, that was breakfast.

So then for lunch was Dominaria. So Dominaria originally had a large and a small set. And the idea was that Dominaria was going to be, we're going to go back to Dominaria originally had a large and a small set. And the idea was that Dominaria was going to go back to Dominaria, and then the small set, there's a big finale, there's a war. And they, what was the bad guy's name in Dominaria? Belzen Locke. So there's a demon Belzen Locke that was doing horrible things, and all of Ravnica, not Ravnica,

all of Dominaria had to get together to defeat Bells and Lock. And so originally, the gathering of the people was the first set and then the battle was the second set. So we had called the first set, so that was called Soup and Salad. That was lunch. That was Soup and Salad.

So Soup is Dominaria. Salad got canceled. We ended up not making it. We ended up, Dominaria was the first set kind of in our new system where every set is just a large set

and there is no such thing as a small set so Salad just kind of went away so there was no Salad but we had named it the following set Guilds of Ravnica

and Ravnica Allegiance was dinner so that was spaghetti and meatballs and that was spaghetti and meatballs. And that was... Those sets, interestingly, were designed together. But ended up... So Dominaria is kind of our first under the new system.

But Dominaria, Guilds of Ravnica, Ravnica Allegiance kind of were already large sets anyway. So while they were the shift over to the new system, it wasn't really till War of the Spark that it kind of changed over. Anyway, we get to War of the Spark. So that is dessert, right? So War of the Spark and its small set,

back when it had a small set, was supposed to be milk and cookies. And the idea there was we had taken the story and broken it up. And I think, like, there's a point in the story where the early on the good guys are looking good but then he brings

the gods, Bolas brings the god eternals and like everything goes poorly for our heroes and that was going to be the ending of War of the Spark. They were going to pick it back up for the final part of the battle in what was called Cookies. So anyway,

so the master plan here, the whole idea behind the breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert was, okay, I now have a naming convention that lets you know what order the blocks go in,

and they let you know the order of what set comes after what set. The problem I ran into was, I may have been a little too clever. Like, people didn't figure out breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert. Like, people just didn't. When I told them that, they're like, oh. But no one, on their own, no one got it.

It was the kind of thing that only when I told people did they get it. And so it didn't do a great job. Like, no one knew what was first between ham and soup and spaghetti. Like they, it just sounded like food. So no one knew the order. So starting with Corona Eldraine, I said, okay, okay, let's, let's create a system by which everybody and be aware that we're now in the new

what we call the 3-in-1 model where there's three large sets and a core set and each set was its own set, right? So there was no more blocks. I no longer had to worry about you knowing the order of the blocks. Blocks were no more.

So what I decided was that what made the most sense is, look, I just want a simple system by which we could do this. So I said, okay, what if we just use the alphabet? What if the first set started with A, the second set started with B, the third set started with C? And I'm started with B, the third set started with C, and I'm like, okay, how hard can that be? That seems like a pretty straightforward thing.

And I went around and talked to people, and everyone liked that. But the thing that was important to me was I wanted to have some sort of theme, just to sort of connect them. And the idea was that this was just for premier non-core them. And the idea was that this was just for premier non-core sets.

So the idea was all the standard legal sets, other than the core sets, because the core sets didn't really have nicknames. They were just sort of we'd call it M20 or whatever, but it didn't really have a nickname. And so I wanted, so I knew that I

wanted to do alphabetic names and I wanted a theme and once again I could have just picked any words and just gone ABC but I you know I take some pride in my code names so I'm like okay so I decided that I would try to figure out what my theme would be

what would the ABC theme be I knew it would go on for a long time because it's three sets a year and so so, with the alphabet, you get, you know, eight or so years. But anyway, I spent a lot of time. So, early on, I came up with some really cool, clever things,

and I had officially run by, I have to run by legal just to make sure that the codenames are okay, and I had done some stuff I wasn't allowed to do. It makes me sad because they were, it was super clever and super geeky and lots of fun, but I wasn't allowed to do it. And so I have that at my desk. I held on to it.

It was the codenames that wouldn't have been, but it was, it was really cool. So anyway, once I realized I had to sort of, I had to pick a basic theme, I looked at a whole bunch of things. And some of the themes

I looked at might, like, once I get to the end of the alphabet, in fact, by the way, probably what's going to happen is, because the alphabet's 26,

so I'm going to bail out before I get to the end, just because the end part of the alphabet is not very helpful in doing codenames. And so I think I'm going to probably bail out at U and then go back to A. And in fact, just so you know, I only announce codenames once they're in exploratory design. Once we're working on them, I announce them. And today I'll go through all the ones that we've announced so far. But I know them all the way through you. And I don't, the problem is the following year would be VWXY and X is just next to impossible to do.

And even the words I can come up with, no one can pronounce them. It's hard to pronounce. So I think I might stop at U and then go back to A and pick a new theme. And I looked at a lot of themes. I spent a lot of time on this little codename project. I look at a lot of themes. The one I ended up going with was sports.

I liked sports because they sounded like cool. They sounded like cool codenames. And it was, I don't know, it just had a little bit of a, like, I wanted codenames that had a little pizzazz to them. Sports sounded cool. So one of my goals was, when I was doing the names, is I wanted to come up with something that was easy to remember. So I didn't want to do anything too obscure. You'll see as I get to some later letters, I start running into

problems, but I wanted to do things that weren't too obscure, but I also wanted to make sure that they weren't too similar to one another. Like, so I want, obviously they're ABC, but I also wanted, like, one of the things is there's a lot of balls in, a lot of sports with ball in them. And so what I said is, okay,

I don't want two sets that we're working on at the same time to have the same root word in it. So for example, like I use baseball for B, but football, I didn't use football for F because of that. So one of the things, so here's my rules. Here's my rules for codenames. It had to be sports because I was doing sports.

It had to be alphabetical in order, A through, A through, eventually U. And I liked it to be something that people knew how to pronounce and spell. Like, I wasn't looking for something... Oh, and the other thing is, it had to be... It couldn't be somebody's thing. It had to be just general public domain. It's a thing. It couldn't be somebody's thing. It had to be just general public domain. It's a thing.

There are a lot of sports that are, you know, made-up sports and fictional things. I could use none of that. I had to do real sports. Okay, so we start with archery. I think, so what happened was, I didn't name all of them at once. I figured out that I could name them all so that I had names for them. In fact, what I did is I made a document that listed, here's all the possible A's, here's all the possible B's, here's all the possible C's.

And then I picked some of my favorites. And the other thing I was trying to do was just mix up the kind of sport. You know, I like the idea of having a variety of sports. And so my rule was I wanted to pick something that was known, easy to spell and there was some variety and I wasn't repeating roots and stuff so people wouldn't get confused so archery, and let's see

I named the first, I think I went through I think I went through the nine when I named them originally I named them through I that was the plan and so archery, baseball through the nine when I named them originally. I named them through I. That was the plan. And so Archery, Baseball, and Crusader. Throne of Eldraine was Archery.

No issues. Ferris Beyond Death was Baseball. There was a lot of debate because I went what happened was I made this list of all the different codenames and then I went and talked to people and said, hey, which of these codenames do you like the best to try to get a sense. Everybody liked archery.

It's not that people didn't like baseball, there are just a lot of sport Bs, and so there's a lot of different people. There are some people, oh, one of the other rules I had about codenames is that it couldn't be something, it couldn't be a terminology or confused with the terminology that Magic already used. For example, B and or C couldn't be a terminology or confused with the terminology that Magic already used. For example, B and or C couldn't be bicycling or cycling, because cycling is a keyword mechanic.

So, like, C couldn't be cycling or even bicycling. So I stayed away from things that had other meanings to them. So in the end, we ended up going with baseball, just because baseball, I mean, we're an American company. Baseball is pretty big here in America. So we just knew it was something that everyone would know. And then for C, we went with cricket.

So Ikoria was the codename cricket. I was also trying to, I mean, there were a lot of C's as well. But I liked the idea of, I liked being a little more international where I could. And cricket, it's an English sport. So I thought it might be fun just to mix things being a little more international where I could, and cricket's an English sport, so I thought it might be fun just to mix things up a little bit. Oh, one of the little cutesy things is, so

when I lead a design team, usually at the end of the design team, I will give away a little gift or something to my team that is tied to the codename. And so for cricket, I gave away little Jiminy Cricket bobbleheads.

So, anyway. Okay, we get on to Zendikar Rising. So Zendikar Rising was diving. My daughter, Sarah, is a diver. And so maybe I had diving on the brain, but I've been to many dive meets watching my daughter dive. And so,

most of these, by the way, most of these letters had numerous good options. Some of them had one. Some of them really didn't even have one. We'll get to those. Okay, so next up was Call Time, which was Equestrian. E was one of those that didn't have a lot of great choices.

I thought Equestrian was cool. Equestrian is horse riding if you don't know. It's a little bit longer than I like. It's definitely one of the names that, I mean, it's not that hard to spell if you sort of sound it out. But it was a name that I got a little feedback, a little pushback on. Okay, F was fencing. So fencing is a little nod to Richard Garfield. I didn't want to do football because I'd done baseball,

and they were within the same time we'd be working on them. But it turns out that, for those that don't know, Richard Garfield likes to fence. And so it's a little nod to Richard. So I made F fencing. Then G, which is Innistrad Midnight Hunt, was golf. Okay, so let me get into this. So Innistrad Crimson Vow was clubs.

I can't get too much into this until we get closer to the set, but at the time we were making this, we didn't know that we were doing Innistrad Crimson Vow. So the reason it's clubs is it got added into the schedule after we'd already named hockey and ice skating.

And so we talked about, okay, well, do we want to move the names and now Crimson Vow will be hockey? But everyone's like, oh, we're going to get confused because people associated hockey with this set. So we decided instead of moving around names that we would just give it a name that went with golf. And so we named it Clubs.

So Crimson Vow breaks the cycle of the alphabetic, but that's why, because when we decided we were doing it and like I said, as we get closer to it I'll go more into that. There's a whole story there. Not something I'm really sharing just yet, but as I tell the design story of Midnight Hunt and

Crimson Vow and stuff, I will talk about sort of how and where that came about. But anyway, Innistrad Midnight Hot was golf. Innistrad Crimson Vow is clubs. Next up is hockey. So here's the interesting thing. Originally, hockey, I'm now into the part where the names have not been announced, right?

All you guys know are the code names. All you guys know are the code names. Interestingly, hockey originally was handball, and I was ice hockey, because I thought ice hockey was the most sport of the eye. There wasn't a lot of great eyes, and I thought ice hockey. But what happened was people got confused between whether hockey was H for hockey

or I for ice hockey. And so we said, oh, okay, let's just call it hockey. So we changed H. H was handball originally. I felt that handball was far enough away from baseball

because it was, I don't know. I thought football was too close. I thought handball was far enough away to be okay. Football was,

F was almost could be football, but I ended up not making it because of Richard made a fencing. Anyway, H was handball. We had to change it to hockey. But then ice needed, I needed a name.

And there's not a lot of great I's. So we ended up going with ice skating, which technically it's in the Olympics. So it is, I mean, it is a sport. But we, that got changed. Originally, like if you look at early schedule, I think even we did a commercial where there's a blackboard

it was a magic commercial for Arena I think but in it there's a guy who's being taught magic and there's a blackboard and on the blackboard we read all these teasers

about magic and on it I write A through I the code name because not all the code names were public but But on that blackboard, I believe H is handball and I is ice hockey, because it changed

after we did that little teaser. So if you've ever seen that teaser and saw H handball I ice hockey, that's why that was so. Okay, now we get to J. So J was judo. And then K was kayaking. The reason K is kayaking and not karate

was I knew we'd get confused if judo and karate were by each other. And there wasn't, judo was the better J, and kayaking I thought was okay. So I ended up keeping J judo and making K kayaking. I did want to, I wasn't very conscious, by the way, of not making sports too close to each other,

because if J was judo and K was kayaking, and J was karate, you really could have gotten confused with those. So that's why I did that. L was lacrosse. M was marathon. N is netball. N was a really hard one. There's not really a lot of famous sports with N. Originally, I did N as Nordic, because

there's Nordic skiing. But I had floated netball for a while. And then when I changed it to Nordic, a lot of people said, oh, we like netball better. It just was easier to remember. Netball is an English variant of basketball. I think you can't move the ball is the big difference. That, like, you don't dribble. You have to throw the ball.

But you're throwing hoops like basketball. And then O, which is right now in Exploratory, is off-roading. O is another one. There's not a lot of great Os. Both N and O were troubled childs. As is Q, by the way, but Q's not public yet. But I got you, Q.

At some point. Not this podcast, because Q's not public yet. Okay, I do want to run through some other codenames from other sets that are not, were not standard legal sets, just to talk about these codenames real quick, and then we'll call it a day. So Summer Magic was known as Edgar,

and 4th Edition was known as Francesca. So what happened was, early in Magic, the printer for each version gave them a name. And I think it was Elfin Beta. I think it was Elfin Beta. But each one of them had a name. And Edgar was what was meant to be the fifth print, was a fifth printing that went awry. For those who don't

know, it was never released. If you ever heard of the Green Hurricane, that comes from Edgar. What happened was they printed it. It wasn't up to Wizard standards. But a little bit of it got out. And so, there's a little, like, it's a collector. There's was, they printed it, it wasn't up to wizard standards, but a little bit of it got out. And so, there's a little, like it's a collector,

there's not, there's very, very, very little of it out in the public. And it's really just for collectors. It's very obscure stuff. But, there's a green hurricane, it's the most famous thing.

A hurricane that's accidentally printed on a green frame. And then Francesca was just E then F. Vanguards, its codename was Commando. I think the idea there was you were picking somebody, and so it was kind of like your commander,

although this is before commander as a format existed. Next was Portal. So Portal was a thing we made to teach people magic, and it was called Harvey. So Harvey, for those that don't know, there's a play and a movie starring Jimmy Stewart, and Harvey is an invisible rabbit. And the idea when we made Portal, nobody knew it existed. So the idea of Harvey was, oh, it's this invisible product that no one knows about.

Plane Chase was called Hopscotch, and that's why you're jumping around from plane to plane. Commander was called Bedlam. So one of the things you'll see about some of the... I did not name none of these... None of these codenames for not... I did all the codenamings for Premiere sets. I don't do the codenamings for non-Premiere sets. So a lot of these codenames are a little more on the nose

than I like my codenames to be. Bedlam was for Commander, and it's decks that fight each other. Bedlam means, you know, chaos and stuff. It says here, Dual decks mirrored in pure and new for actually was Mac and Cheese. I didn't know any of the dual decks had codenames. I'm not sure why that one dual deck had codenames.

I have no idea. Modern Mafters was codenamed Picasso. That's because he is a modern mafter. A modern art mafter. Once again, no one knew when we were making it that we were making modern mafters, so it being a codename wasn't a horrible thing,

but it is a little more like it's Picasso and has to do with modern. People can figure that out. So some of these names are not great names. Conspiracy was called Hydra. Hydra in Marvel Comics is a fictional terrorist organization, and they sort of, like,

infiltrate things, and so the idea was, ooh, who could you trust? Eternal Masters was Jitterbug, which is a dance. I have no idea what that was a name. Unstable, I... So, Unstable was given the name Quicksilver, not by me. And it was... The problem was we couldn't use it, because Unstable has a

silver border. That's not... it was too on the nose. And so it was a codename that we used internally but we never used externally, which makes it a really bad codename. Now the good news was no one knew we were doing it so we had no reason to talk about it. Normal sets we'll talk about ahead of time. Oh, it's in Explorator or something.

So we had no reason to use it, but anyway, it was not a good codename. Battlebond was Slingshot. I think because you were fighting, I guess. Modern Horizons was Contemporary. I'm not sure why we called that... Oh, I guess... I got it.

It's a synonym for modern. That's what's going on. It's a synonym for modern. Once again, not a good codename because it gives away what it is. But it's a set about modern and Contempor It's a synonym for modern. Once again, not a big co-name because it gives away what it is. But it's a set about modern and it contemporaries a synonym for modern. Mystery Booster was Whirlpool.

I have no idea where that name came from. Secret Lair we called Raindrop. I think the idea was... Like, the Secret Lair was, they fall from the sky! You never know when one's coming. And so, like, raindrops fall from the sky. I think that was where like the secret they fall from the sky you never know when one's coming and so like raindrops

fall from the sky I think that was where that name came from Unsanctioned which was the unbox set was called Parachute and the reason was when it was first made

the project was called Parachute because we made a project that if we ever needed a set of a last minute we could just throw it in it was kind of a set that wasn't tied time wise that like if we could do it set of a last minute, we could just throw it in. It was kind of a set that wasn't tied time-wise, that, like, if we could do it this year or next year.

And Gavin came up with the idea of making it an Unbox set. We had never done that before. And we could reprint Uncards. But Uncards really have no timing to them, so, like, we could reprint it whenever. And then we released it right away. So it wasn't, I mean, I joke about being a parachute. Like, here's a parachute.

You can use it when you need it. Pull it! Commander Legends was called Chevron, which is a gas station. I have no idea why that's called Chevron. Timefowl Remastered was called Project Cupcake. Yeah, some of these names I didn't name. I don't always know

what the nickname is. A lot of them are on the head. This one's less on the head. I don't know why it's called Project Cupcake. Maybe because it was a sweet project, maybe? Cupcake? I'm not sure. And then finally, coming this summer, Dungeon Dragons Adventures of Forgotten Realms was originally...

We didn't know... We didn't know when we first started making it that it was going to be a standard legal set. So it didn't know when we first started making that it was going to be a standard legal set. So, it didn't get named as if it was a standard legal set, because at the time as part of the code name, so it ended up being called Zebra. And I'm not sure. That's a good question. I don't know why

it's called Zebra. That's its code name. So, anyway, okay, so me going over these code names I didn't know are far less exciting. I mean, maybe you didn't know the code name. But anyway, that, so we're not caught upenames I didn't know are far less exciting. I mean, maybe you didn't know the codename. But anyway, so we're not caught up. You now know all the codenames of sets that are in some form of... Exploratory design is the earliest that you'll see something. So off-roading is the earliest of something.

We do start on exploratory for the P set in a month or two. So you will know the P name soon. And before the end of the year, you'll know the Q name. But I have to warn you, it is not the greatest of names. I will keep you from getting your hopes up for a good Q name.

Anyway, that, my friends, is Codename. So I like talking about weird things from time to time. There's people that really get into the minutia. This is very much a minutia episode. But anyway, I hope you enjoyed it and I will see you all. Oh wait, I'm here at my desk. Sorry, I didn't even do my ending. I'm here at my desk.

So we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So I hope you guys enjoyed this and I'll see you next time. Bye bye.